I just ordered my first stainless steel pan and I’m kind of nervous about using it. I think I’ve hyped it up in a head a bit. I’ve been watching soooo many videos about the leidenfrost effect when heating up stainless steel pans but not ONE video where they explain why it’s nonstick even after lowering the temperature after attaining the effect. I saw someone say that the expanding of the metal from the heat makes it nonstick but that still doesn’t explain how it remains so even after turning it back down to low.
In: Physics
It doesn’t.
The leidenfrost effect has nothing to do with making a cooking surface non stick, it’s basically an interesting science experiment with no use in cooking. It would be like trying to make soup by putting all the ingredients into a vacuum flask and then sticking the entire thing into an oven. You are insulating what you are trying to cook from heat.
To create a non stick surface you need to polymerize a layer of oil onto the surface, this is best sone by using a high smoke point neutral oil, like ground nut, wiping the surface of what you want to make non stick with a fine layer and getting it very hot.
This causes the oil to polymerize onto the surface and creating a barrier that helps prevent food to stick.
Check out videos or instructions on seasoning cookware for an in-depth dive on how to do this.
On a stove, you’re not controlling the temperature. You’re controlling how much heat is being added. The pan doesn’t cool down when you turn down the stove, it just gets hotter more slowly. So the idea is you want get the pan hot enough to sear your food but you don’t want it to get so hot that you burn the outside before the inside gets cooked.
Turning down the heat isn’t part of stopping the food from sticking, it’s just so that the food will cook more evenly.
So a lot of people don’t seem to understand what exactly is happening when they cook. The TEMP determines how quickly the outside of the food COOKS. The TIME is what determines how QUICKLY the heat PENETRATES. So when you have HIGH temp, the outside is cooking really quickly but the inside needs way more time. You’re trying to balance the two to arrive at whatever outcome you want.
You want that high temp in the pan where water beads up and dances in the pan. Then when you put whatever in the pan, you want to have it on low heat so you maintain temp so the outside doesn’t brown too quickly and you get the correct internal temp. You still want oil in the pan since stainless will never be like Teflon/non-stick but it will have non-stick properties once you master the technique.
stainless steel isn’t really “nonstick” like teflon is. It’s just smooth with no pores so if you avoid burning things onto it they mostly won’t stick.
Stainless steel tends to stick as a result of the proteins of the meat binding to the surface of the pan. Nonstick doesn’t have this effect due to their teflon coating, and cast iron is seasoned with a thin layer of polymerized fat coating the metal and preventing the protein from having direct contact with the metal, preventing sticking.
By making the pan hot first, the natural moisture in your food instantly vaporizes upon contact creating an insulating barrier also preventing proteins from sticking to the surface.
Generally, you don’t actually want to cook your food at high temperature so they’re more or less telling you to lower the heat to the actual temperature you want to use. Fortunately, most stainless steel is fairly thin and low in thermal mass so even the initial high pan temperature will quickly lower.
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